Changer of Wars
by leave this world
Summary: Spanning space and time, the plots of the Changer of Ways ensnare a young witch when he plants a shard of Chaos in her wand. Unknowingly blessed with the eldritch might of a Chaos champion of Tzeentch, Hermione's thirst for knowledge and dedication to seeing Harry through the second war unleash weapons that will rock the foundations of the wizard world. HHR. Spell theory focus.
1. Chapter 1

**Changer of Wars**

**Chapter 1**

In two hundred years of service to the Emperor, through a thousand desperate battles waged across the breadth of the galaxy, he had never seen a storm like this. Reality blistered and peeled as all about the fleet the warp writhed, spilling forth from the immaterium into real space in a torrent of ghostly waves. On the planet below, smaller but no less deadly warp storms raged as legions of the fallen called out to their dark god, voices raised to wreck Emperor-only knew what havoc.

Endless ranks of lances and plasma batteries pounded down in answer as the _Implacable Faith_, _His Will_ and scores of lesser ships unleashed enough firepower to destroy a full traitor armada. As he watched, continents boiled, the atmosphere burned and the very crust of the forsaken planet began to crack. It was not enough. The comm still crackled with static from below, the enemy's unholy chants tearing across all frequencies, seeming to only gain in intensity as the world died.

This was madness even for servants of the Ruinous Powers. There could be no surviving the Imperial fleet, never mind the warp storms the enemy had raised themselves. Countless legions of hardened troops below would be swept away before this was done. Enough cultists and traitor marines to make any sector commander sweat, sacrificed for a single, empty world. What could be worth it?

Emperor provide they never found out.

"Captain, can we trace the source of these transmission?" He asked, hands clasped behind his back, face calm even as _His Will_ exploded out the port window. A hundred thousand hands lost to the screaming warp in the blink of an eye.

"Aye Lord Inquisitor, but the ship's machine spirit refuses to draw a firing solution," the captain replied, cold outrage filing his mechanical voice at the Great Enemy's interference with the sacred workings of _Implacable Faith_.

"It is to be expected. Charge teleporters and ready every combat unit we have left for immediate deployment. Sector C-60789. Tell Sergeant Casius's Grey Knights to rally to my beacon. The Enemy shall not triumph this day," he said, the machine spirit of his ancient armor already linking with the larger spirit of the battleship and preparing to move to the planet below.

He was gone before the captain could reply, feet slamming into the cratered ground of the planet in the blink of an eye. Force sword bared, he charged forward into a storm of enemy fire. He forced himself to ignore the shattered forms of the guardsmen and Dark Angels space marines littering the ground as far as the eye could see. There would be time to mourn and count the dead later.

The enemy fire intensified as he topped a ridge the first wave of Imperial troops had clearly bought in blood. Here and there survivors of the initial assault rallied at his passing, scrambling forward behind his armored form. Twenty meters; he could hear the enemy chants clearly now, blasphemous words tearing at his soul.

Ten meters. His armor's rangefinder counted down in ancient gothic letters as the enemy's front line came into view. He leaped a razorwire barrier without so much as a pause, ancient servos whining as they powered the near-half ton bulk of his artificer armor five feet into the air. He landed squarely on the chest of a cultist, crushing the heretic with a satisfying crunch. His sword and bolt pistol added to the carnage a moment later as he literally waded through the enemy's light troops.

Laser fire scored his armor as the cultists fired wildly, uncaring about the causalities they were inflicting on their own ranks. Warnings flashed across his display as minor breaches opened across his armor from the sheet weight of the enemy's fire.

But the machine spirit pressed on. Blessed by the high-priests of Mars and Terra both, it would not be undone by such pitiful weapons. Against his fury, the cultists shattered, breaking even as a wave of Imperial survivors poured through the lines behind his furious charge. Drop ships filled the sky and, for a bare moment, he allowed himself a surge of hope, his armored legs pumping a furious tempo across the ground as the source of the chanting drew ever-closer.

The ground itself he ran across had become corrupted, strange growths of wholly unnatural colors oozing odd ichor that burned and hissed in contact with the air as it let forth a hideous stench that his re-breather struggled to filter.

Muttering a prayer to the Emperor, he pressed on. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he noticed that the enemy's fire had slackened. Over the comms the chanting still came, but interspersed were the comforting and familiar battle chants of the Grey Knights as they materialized ten feet to his left.

Chancing a glance to the sky, he watched spears of energy continue to ravage the planet as the Imperial fleet fired on. He watched too with a heavy heart as poisonous explosions filled the sky and the fleet paid the price for defying the warp. Through the haze of battle, he saw the unstoppable energies of scores of lance batteries almost seemed to bend through the air, diverted by the enemy's black arts.

One question answered then. He had suspected, but there could be no question now - only one being commanded such power. The Changer of Ways, the most subtle and dangerous of the ruinous brotherhood was behind this storm. Behind the chaos of four wars that had assembled the artifacts he almost had missed. Behind the billions of Chaos and Imperial losses that led him and his fleet to the this dead planet on the forsaken rim of the galaxy.

He did not know his enemy's purpose. He did not need to, for to try to grasp the mind of the Ruinous Powers lay the path to madness. He knew only that it could not be allowed to succeed.

Firm in his faith, he charged forward towards the source of the enemy's power which was now revealed in his rangefinder to be nothing more than a broker circle of stones. He did not dare open himself to the warp to see its true form. Filled with Chaos energies as it was it would no doubt drive him mad.

Ten feet from the circle his armor rocked as a bolt slammed into him. Stumbling, he pressed forward, his own bolt pistol spitting death as he chanted the litany of hatred over the speakers built into his helmet. Behind him the remaining Grey Knights took up the litany, mechanical voices raised in praise to the immortal Emperor as their force weapons rose and fell, shattering cultist and traitor marines alike in their zealous fury.

They reached the circle almost as one, the superhuman Grey Knights barely slowing as they shredding a score of Thousand Son marines. Force sword bared, he swung down in an unstoppable arc, aiming for the bowed head of a sorcerer who's foul voice echoed a thousand, thousand times within the chanting.

His aim was true, but the foul sorcerer was blessed by his dark master and simply ceased to be, rematerializing ten meters forward in the blink of an eye. The mutated ground pulsed in time to the chanting now and the stones glowed with hellish fire as the sorcerer raised his horned helmet and made a single, absent gesture towards them.

Fire exploded in its wake, drawing klaxon warnings from his armor and screams of agony from the Grey Knights as pure chaos flames consumed the area. He ignored it, pressing forward desperately even as his rangefinder screamed warnings of daemons that had risen in the fire's wake.

Clawed hands tore at him as he struggled forward, a prayer to the Emperor barely seeping through cracked and bloodied lips. The distance counted down on his rangefinder even as the right side of his armor was nearly torn off by a blow from a daemon made of liquid flame.

Staggering, he watched in horror as a portal sliced through the air in front of him. Madness lay though it as the spinning world of the immaterium seemed cackle in triumph as it prepared to spill forth its poison into the universe.

He could not allow that. Not allow whatever the Great Enemy had planned to be fulfilled. Steeling himself and consigning his soul to the Emperor's grace, he lunged with all his remaining strength. By divine grace he missed the still opening portal, slamming into the sorcerer with his full weight behind his force sword's hungry blade. The physic weapon howled in glee as it consumed the heretic's blasphemous remnants of a soul and for a moment the only sound he could hear was its satisfied keening wail.

In the next moment the world suddenly stilled around him. Of the portal there was no sign. The warp storm in the skies above too, gone without a trace.

Kneeling down, too exhausted to move, he gave the most heartfelt thanks he had ever known to the Emperor for averting what disaster had nearly been.

* * *

Far away in the timeless void of the warp, hideous laughter spilled through the immaterial realm. The inquisitor thought himself clever, thought that by tracing a pattern spanning but decades that he had thwarted the will of the Changer of Ways. Fool. Such small mortal minds could never comprehend that true plans reached across millennia, that victory and defeat were not measured in battles or wars, but in the implacable advance of the strands of fate.

He was the Changer of Ways. First and Greatest of the True Gods of the universe and his designs were not so easily undone.

* * *

In the void, unseen by even the eyes of its sleepless, endless denizens, a single seed fell through time and space. Powered by the blood sacrifice of a planet at the hands of the righteous, fueled by the death of a trickster deceived and betrayed, it breached ancient wards strung across reality and reentered the material realm driven forward by the will of the implacable Changer of Ways. Gathering momentum, it plunged through the atmosphere until it impacted in a hail of fire upon a lonely northern isle of a blue planet. The crater of its arrival lasted but a moment before the ground swallowed the seed and sealed the breach.

Years passed. Slowly, imperceptibly, the seed grew until it stood as a mighty tree. A carefully calibrated siren song rolling out through the world, patient but insistent. Fate could not be rushed.

A hundred years passed and still the ruinous tree sung. Finally a man, the awaited man came. He saw the magic in the tree, but not the source. Intrigued, his normally all-seeing mind lulled by the tree's song, he cut a single branch.

Taking it back with him he turned the branch into a wand which joined countless others, anonymous and gathering dust on a back shelf. Years passed and the world grew. Men and women lived, fought and died while tree's deadly progeny waited, biding its time within the back of an old man's shop.

* * *

The morning when the fate of the world was sealed dawned bright and warm, with just the slightest hint of an approaching fall chill in the air. An eleven-year old girl who could scarcely believe the wondrous life a letter had promised her came to the old man's shop. Eyes shining with awe and fresh from the wonders of an enchanted book store with all the knowledge of the strange new world at her fingertips, she held out her hand and the old man placed ruin into it.

It woke as sparks flowed from it at the young girl's over-eager flick. The old man smiled, another satisfied customer, another dusty wand finally gone to its proper home.

"I do believe that is the one Ms. Granger…"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Hermione should have been worried. Should have been fighting a wave of guilt, but all she could manage at the moment was impatient curiosity.

The day hadn't started well. The time turner that had seemed like such a good idea at the time was beginning to give her a serious headache. Worse, the electives she had gotten it to take had not turned out to be worth the effort.

The classes, like everything else in the school, had sounded so interesting sitting in front of her on the sign-up sheet. Divination, ancient runes and arithmomancy – the possibilities were endless.

Unfortunately, divination seemed to be code for get high on incense in order to better make things up and the spell creation aspects of the other two classes were both needlessly complicated and laughably primitive. Why create a ten dimensional vector to hold a single gesture when a simple transformation she had designed as a first year required only a four-dimensional construct?

Still, all of this was nothing new to her. The world that had seemed so promising two years ago had, much like the mundane world before it, proven insufficient to hold her interest. Everyone around her seemed to be afflicted with a permanent state of brainlessness and things crawled by at her dim-witted classmates pace.

She had mastered the first, second and third year content before her first year was out. By half way through the second year she was approaching the average fifth year in skill and, as far as a few cautious discussions had shown, her theoretical knowledge was so far beyond the students and adults around her it didn't even bear considering. She tried. She really did. She was patient with her classmates, patient with her teachers and, after that dreadful incident with the troll in her first year, had learned to keep her mouth shut.

It was terribly lonely at times. But, thankfully, only at times. The one good thing to come of her time here came in the form of two boys. Not equals – that, she had learned long ago was too much to ask for, but at least people who accepted her, companions who had taken a stand for her time and time again when no one else could be bothered to offer her more than jealous disdain and contempt.

Of course, after today, the world might have something else to offer her - fear.

It started during another interminable session of divination. In the front of the class the professor, who more and more seemed to be an untalented charlatan, droned on about the mystic impact of tea leaves. Intermixed with the semi-coherent lecture were anecdotes of personal prowess of truly dubious providence.

She found it almost insulting really that this fraud thought Harry could be undone by a mere grim when the year before he had fought a sixty foot snake whose barest glance could kill. As the dramatic death predictions continued unabated for the tenth minute she toyed again with the idea of quitting. She hated admitting failure, but there was a fine line between pride and stupidity, and staying in this class was rapidly approaching the latter.

She had enough side projects going at the moment that the extra hour would be a blessing. Balanced against the net total of zero things she had learned thus far in divination and the answer seemed like a foregone conclusion.

One more class. The stubborn part of her mind repeated for the third time that week. Sighing, she mentally steeled herself and agreed. It could get better, after all, and she did so hate to look like she was giving up.

"I hope the tea is at least decent." Harry murmured to her right as he broke through her thoughts and gently held out a steaming mug of tea. Taking it, she smiled, "We should be so lucky. Wouldn't count on it though – warming charms aren't the best way to keep the flavor in."

"Bloody tell me about it. Don't know how Ron's family manages it with that same pot on all day. Tastes like boiled socks by four o'clock." He replied, taking a cautious sip and grimacing, "Not quite to boiled footwear, but holding your nose wouldn't hurt."

Watching her friends face as he forced the burned tea down she cursed her stupid pride that hadn't let her quit every day of the last three weeks. Today, though, she promised with renewed determination as the putrid tea crossed her lips, this was the absolute last day, barring a miracle.

Someone must have been listening, because as the last wretched drops of tea disappeared, the leaves stared back at her in the most beautiful pattern she had ever seen. A swirl of what was unmistakably flame climbed the side of her cup, pierced in its midst by a single, unblinking eye. The dull color of the tea leaves was forgotten as the strange symbol shown with mid dizzying beauty. Its colors seemed to writhe almost too quickly for the eye to follow and the shape itself appeared to be constantly in motion and yet, somehow, unchanging.

She did not know how long she had stared down at it, teacher and classmates forgotten. She knew only that she never wanted to lift her gaze. That, for the first time since she had picked up her wand two year ago, she felt at home.

Her rapture was interpreted by a powerful scent of incense followed a moment later by the most unwelcomed and un-dulcet voice of Trelawny.

"And what have we hear? The voices have told me that you would see a…" Whatever the voices had revealed to the incensed-addled loon was lost when her bug-eyed gaze strayed down to Hermione's cup.

For a moment the professor froze, eyes impossibly wide behind her too-thick glasses. Then she screamed, her voice shaking the shrouded walls of the small tower.

For a moment the class was frozen. Wondering, an uncharitable part of her mind thought, if this was another faux-fit, another _grand-mal_ nothing. But then blood began to pour from the professor's eyes and there could be no doubt.

It had ended as abruptly as it stared. The professor's life and screams of her classmates, cutting off with an almost eerie synchronicity as the blood ceased flowing and the willowy form of Trelawney toppled to the ground, eyes empty red holes grotesquely magnified behind her glasses.

Stunned silence and quite sobs lingered on the wake of the horrible crash of a body hitting the ground without the slightest resistance.

Harry had, of course, been the first to recover, offering her shoulder a quick squeeze before sprinting from the room in search of help. He returned with the headmaster himself not five minutes later, both panting and out of breath.

Dumbledore had looked truly shaken for the first time she had ever seen as he stared down at the unmoving body of the professor. A quick motion of his wand and the resulting downturn in his face told all she needed to know – dead.

They had, of course, examined her cup. But there was nothing left to examine and all the wand waving in the world failed to recall its form or show again the symbol. They didn't think to use the time turner hidden beneath her robes and she didn't remind them.

After the failed investigation the whole had class had unceremoniously been led to the hospital wing for a round of calming draughts. She should have needed hers. Should have been thinking of the death of another living, breathing human not a foot from her face.

But the only thing she could focus on was the symbol. It was seared in her mind. She could have drawn it for them in seconds. She should have done so and the rule-abiding side of her psyche writhed uncomfortably at the thought of her lie by omission.

She tried to assuage it with careful rationalization. It could be dangerous to them. Dangerous to her.

But it was simply a rationalization. She didn't draw the symbol because she didn't want to. This was her mystery. Her ray of light and hope in a lonely, boring world. Her friends would be told at some point. Once she had the answer. And maybe then, when he had gotten all she could from the mystery, they could turn it over to the professors to muddle over.

Maybe. Or maybe not, she thought as the calming draught slowly lulled her to sleep. Questions about such a late revelation could be _uncomfortable._

A matter for another time, she thought as sleep overwhelmed her mind. Behind her rapidly fading vision the symbol lingered and, at the edge of her mind she thought she heard laughter. Wonderful, terrible laughter.


End file.
